…highsec is “Space WoW”: you log in, you grind, you progress. No skill or brain is needed. And WoW is prettier. I left WoW for a competitive game and I found only Space WoW. – Gevlon

That says more about you than about the game. Nobody and nothing forced you to stay in hi-sec and be a trader. – Druur

profit does. Even if I would be the best PvP-er of EVE, I’d be significantly poorer than today. – Gevlon

Posting this here as it’s likely to get edited out by Gevlon on his site soon. And just a quick note for non-EVE players; Gevlon is poor by market standards, so his “profit does” line is hilarious. He has more ISK than the average PvPer, yes, but that’s because the average PvPer is having fun playing the game, while Gevlon is off being a market bot. The best part is when confronted about this, Gevlon claims his goal was never to become rich or do anything significant on the market, just make enough ISK to… something.

Gevlon is right about one thing here; what he is doing does indeed take zero skill or brains, it’s just pure zombie grind, and the reason he has found mild success is because most players would rather blow their brains out than station trade for as long as he has been at it, hence decent margins on simple items like skillbooks or hardwires.

But you gotta love the WoWbies attitude right? Even in a sandbox they manage to grind the fun out of the game for themselves, and despite options so easily available, they just sit paralyzed in their corner and cry rather than doing something about it. The millions of Gevlon-like drones who do their best to emulate a bot, all while complaining that the content is boring, and then paying up for more bot emulation content (this time with a Panda skin!) would be funny if the whole thing wasn’t so sad, and did not dictate so much MMO ‘design’ based purely on catering to the lowest denominator.

Indeed, similar effect here. Some WoW players would always marvel at Gevlon the market genius, but I always figured it was a small fish playing in a tiny pond. He moved to EVE, and yup, small fish lost in a big ocean.

While I’m sure that mocking him is entertaining for you, what did you think of his main point? That providing security to low/null sec is in competition with the game, and the deck is stacked in favor of the game. And his solution to increase the costs of hi-sec security in order to allow players to compete with it.

As usual, his main point is completely laughable for more reasons than I honestly care to explain. If you really want to hear why though, feel free to post a link to his post on the EVE forums or on Kugu and see what the reaction is.

The thing is that the people who are in high-sec who never leave high-sec would just leave the game if it forced them to do something they don’t want to do.

In the mean time, they provide markets, industrialists, miners etc. And local colour. Don’t underestimate the value of that – flying round virtually empty systems wouldn’t give you the impression of flying around in a bustling galactic empire. Jita actually *feels* like somewhere real.

If CCP want people in low-sec, provide a carrot for the various game styles over and above that available in high. Maybe make industrial slots cheaper – maybe have more contraband and useful items that can only be used/consumed/traded in low/null. Maybe create (more) forms of PvE that can only be done in low.

Seriously, if someone isn’t playing a game the way you want them to, you need to provide inducements. Punishing them will just lead to them quitting. There’s a limit to how much abuse most customers will put up with.

I think the only real sad part of his trend is that he doesn’t see the glass ceiling not far above him. He’s not even trying to break through. He’s too used to a wow style market, where there isn’t really finite resources. His current attitude is like me saying, “Hey, I mined in World of Warcraft, and now I’m mining Veldspar in EVE high-sec, Mining is easy in both games’.

Expecting him to prove a major point was what most of his readership wanted, sadly they are only getting a minor point proven. He’s quickly becoming average to his own reader-base.

You know you’re in a bad spot when an eve miner like me begins to feel some pity in his direction.

“The unpredictability of EVE is really what keeps me hooked, and it’s why I much prefer the unstable, exciting income of PvP to the slow, predictible grind of PvE. Besides, cracking open POS pinatas is really like opening presents on Christmas day”

And why do you guys think that any change is needed to make players change their playstyle and why is that change is needed?

I honestly dont understand the need that some persons have to dictate how others have their fun, like the goblin on the post enjoys sitting in front of his computer changing numbers on a trade windows, something that would drive me to suicide in under 15mins, I may enjoy licking windows for fun, wich one is the more valid if we are both having fun?
And remember, the purpose of a game is having “fun”, no matter how subjective that may be.

Fernando, no one is saying that he shouldn’t be allowed to play his style or that you cannot lick windows if that’s your pleasure. Some people just make fun of his style of playing and clearly explain why it would bore them to death. Are you saying that we shouldn’t discuss and make critical (but rational) comments about different playing styles?

The problem is that he’s not saying ‘market trading is what I enjoy, and look how successful I am at it’, he’s saying ‘market trading is horribly boring, but it’s the optimal way to play, and that’s all I’ll ever do. Therefore, this game sucks’.

He refuses to listen to people who explain to him that
A) Isk isn’t everything. Fun is.
and
B) There are better, faster and more fun ways to make isk. There are people in EVE with literally trillions of isk, and who make more than he did in months on a daily basis. Instead of aspiring to be one of those people, he declares that he’s won EVE because he has more isk than he knows what to do with but not enough isk for anyone to care.

Point B is really the key to all of this. Gevlon believes his amount of ISK is significant, in part because he is misreading SOV-holding alliance Excel sheets and his non-trading experience is reading EVENews24 battle reports.

In other words, he is a nobody in EVE because he has done nothing worthwhile (other than unintentionally trolling on a blog), yet he not only believes he has actually accomplished something, but that his contribution is greater than others. Even worse, when those with saint-like patience try to explain this to him on his blog, because they actually know what they are talking about, he rejects (or deletes) them and puts up strawman after strawman, or edits things and states that his NEXT post is going to explain everything, which it never does.

The reason Gevlon hasn’t accomplished much on Eve is because he’s come to the conclusion that what would be considered “accomplishments” by most of the Eve crowd is actually pointless when viewed through a purpose. The money is found in high sec not in null and he can’t figure out why people want to fight over null sec. For most people the reason they go to null is for fun. For Gevlon fun is found through a purpose and that purpose’s merit is determined by profitability. This is also why he finds what you consider a grind to be fun. He finds fun in a purpose. Currently working the markets only purpose is his blog and I believe he will quit Eve when it no longer contains viable blogging material for him since there really isn’t any other reason he’s playing Eve. Essentially he’s playing Eve like WoW where it really only served as a pretty world to perfrom social experiments on.

You make a number of trenchant criticisms of Gevlon’s EVE playstyle. You also make two criticisms which tend to interfere with each other, which I will illustrate with a silly and disturbing analogy:

It’s basically like you’re telling a serial killer–“Being a serial killer is horrible, and I won’t listen to you because you’re a serial killer…but, btw, if you killed more than 50 people I might listen to you a little because then you’d be a really successful serial killer, so you should try to be smarter about killing people so that you can be better at it, even though I think that being a serial killer is horrible and that you’re a bad person for doing it and shouldn’t do it at all, but if you do keep killing people maybe try to be more inventive about it and do something memorable and new, here’s a link to a serial killer that I find really inspiring.”

So , you should probably either A. Stop harping on Gevlon for focusing so much on making ISK, or B. Set a concrete target above which you’ll concede that he’s made a significant amount of ISK. Currently you’re trying to eat your cake and possess it too, by simultaneously arguing that ISK possession is both significant and insignificant. Or, just drop both these lines of argument and focus on his flailing around trying to find a purpose and organize people to accomplish it, that’s really the meat of the issue anyway.

Gevlon is a serial killer pretending he is a conquer (it’s ok/glorious when you kill thousands/millions, so long as you win. If you lose you are a dictator/terrorist/badguy). I don’t respect the killer, I respect the conqueror.

In other words, Gevlon thinking he is ‘rich’ is one issue, because he’s not even close by those who focus on ISK. The other issue is how he got his ISK: being a human market bot is boring and anyone could do it, while making a trillion ISK doing something creative is worth respecting, and is not something most, including Gevlon, can do.

In essence, your entire argument boils down to the claim that the way Gevlon plays EVE is boring and uncreative. In contrast to the way you play EVE, where you formed a fairly generic WH corp, which was so exciting that you have apparently stopped playing EVE in favor of playing yet another WoW-clone. Yes, only so you can write about how it’s not as good a game as if it were a sandbox, just like the last 5 non-sandboxes you played (except LOL of course)…an odd pursuit for a man who claims to despise people who seek out boredom.

Personally, I enjoy trading, and I also have my main in a WH full time–and I play regularly, so on the new objectively meaningful scale of ‘playing EVE in a not boring way’, I seem to be the true winner here. Since we all know having fun is a competitive sport ~_~

Your posts where you address zany contradictions in Gevlon’s writings are hilarious. But a post which boils down to calling someone else’s playstyle boring? How in the world does that strike you as ‘entertaining blog content’? What’s next, an incisive analysis on the hilariously boring world of low paying factory manufacturing jobs?

Your wh corp wasn’t original or creative, but your viewpoint in writing about it was original and creative–as would be your GW2 criticism, if it didn’t sound just like your posts about Rift and Cataclysm, etc. I’m not asking you to cut Gev a break just because he’s a little cracked…I’m just asking you to apply the same lax standards to him as you apply to yourself. Heaping criticism on him for playing a sandbox, even only part of it, while you yourself are playing themeparks, after all you’ve written about how sandboxes are superior? Really? If Gev quit and went back to WoW you’d DEFINITELY make fun of him for running back to a themepark, yet you yourself are playing a Wow-clone…huh? (judging by the content of your posts as to what you’re playing, and the fact that I never see you on EVE anymore on your main)

(this comment written while in a wh, engaged in a pos bash, an activity which requires zero % of my brain beyond checking dscan and listening on vent to our scout. I would have written earlier while station trading, a supposedly horrendously mind-numbing activity, but I actually use my brain while doing that, and it involves making many more fun decisions than bashing a structure. It’s much more entertaining than wormhole sites/structure bashing, unless you’re just bad at it, perhaps)

“In essence, your entire argument boils down to the claim that the way Gevlon plays EVE is boring and uncreative.”

As evident by his multiple failures to start a like-minded Corp, or to even find like-minded players to join him in his current welfaring of TEST.

Which itself would be a non-issue, except that Gevlon insists what he does is what everyone else SHOULD be doing, and his continued amazement that people would rather do ANYTHING else to earn ISK. Leaving that out kinda misses the entire point I think.

As for the what I play and why, I’d explain it in detail but I think I have already multiple times. GW2 was as much about INQ as it was about the game itself. If anything, even my low expectations were not met, which is both surprising and of course disappointing. Perhaps I bought into everyone but Bhag writing that GW2 was something other than a WoW-clone (which its not, its worse in many ways), but a lot of the current situation can also be attributed to my activities in EVE (which is something I’ll post about at some point, as I think its an interesting lesson).

That said I do still have two of my three EVE accounts active, and still do a bit of trading and PI, so… ha?

“As evident by his multiple failures to start a like-minded Corp, or to even find like-minded players to join him in his current welfaring of TEST.”

One could interpret this set of facts many different ways, but A. it’s a bit early in his EVE career to make that kind of final judgment and B. I’m not really interested in debating that. Whether he’s a robot, or a madman tilting at windmills, or a robot tilting at windmills, we’re approaching semantics there.

“Which itself would be a non-issue, except that Gevlon insists what he does is what everyone else SHOULD be doing, and his continued amazement that people would rather do ANYTHING else to earn ISK. Leaving that out kinda misses the entire point I think.”

Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing that IS worth writing about Gevlon. Leaving that out would indeed be missing the entire point, except that you have missed my entire point, which is that this, the worthwhile type of thing to write about him, gets buried under endless ‘he’s a boring robot’ garbage–which is the opposite of me just leaving it out. This is what’s interesting, not that he fails, but that the goal he’s shooting for is an inhuman dystopia, and tons of people are jumping on his bandwagon, and that he’s flabbergasted that anyone doesn’t want to. If he achieved his goals it would literally destroy EVE And CCP, and that’s just his ingame goals.

“As for the what I play and why, I’d explain it in detail but I think I have already multiple times.”

Well, you went ahead and explained it anyway, but there was really no need to. I wasn’t making an “aha gotcha hypocrite, explain yourself!” point, just a good-natured plea for tolerance with a modicum of gotcha!

Sorry, but this doesn’t make sense and is a dangerous way of thinking. Let me give you an example. Say, I am a Democrat. Are you saying that as a Democrat I shouldn’t be watching and discussing what’s going on at the Republican National Convention? How else can I have a civilized and educated discussion with my Republican friends if I don’t know their philosophy and their arguments? Are you suggesting that themepark fanboys should never play and talk about sandbox games, and conversely?